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Re: They created J#, why couldn't they do VB#?

Bob,
> > Personally, I think that VB.Net should be marketed as "VB.Net version
1"
> > and NOT "VB 7"; because it really isn't.
>
> Who is marketing VB.NET as VB7? I hear a fair number of people complaining
> that VB.NET is NOT VB7. Of course, judging from some of those folks
> criteria, Visual Basic ceased to exist when VB4 came out, but they refuse
to
> admit it.

MS is maketing it as Visual Studio 7 and the langauges as v7. But I really
think that the current versioning should end with v6 and Visual Studio
should be "VS1 for .Net". As for the VB4 thing, well it did what VB3 did,
added new things and created 32 bit code. It wasn't a radical shift and the
langauge stayed the same. The changes involves in that were to do with the
OS changing. this time, we have the tools *before* the OS changes, which
means that we will have the software ready by the time Windows.Net is a
reality. But VB1 to 6 were a straight upgrade path since there major
language or structural changes.
> I view VB.NET as the next logical step in the evolution of Visual Basic.
Did
> Microsoft make some very arbitrary and unnecessary changes to VB? Yep.
> However, when I add up the pros and cons, I'm very glad we have VB.NET and
> not a COM-based VB7.

I also am very glad for .Net, not least of which because it allows me to
carry on using the language of my choice and still get the same results I
was looking for when I considered switching. COM is/was ok and it's a ****
sight better than CORBA or XPCOM. Although I like the assemblies idea.
It'll take a while to learn some of these things, but I'm patient and a
quick study. <g>

Re: They created J#, why couldn't they do VB#?

Vlad,

"Vlad Ivanov" <nomail@nomail.com> wrote in message
news:3c11266b$1@147.208.176.211...
>
> Mike makes alot of sense by the way. Let me ask a rethorical question -
have
> you tried using upgrade wizard on VB6 UserControls? If not you have a
surprise
> coming. I like the language and all - but oh boy does it suck to have to
> rethink-recode-rearchitect-retype all of my libs for .Net considering the
> fact that i don't even know a quarter of the documentation yet. I see
nothing
> wonderful about that - coz it wasn't like that during previous upgrades.
> Not even close.

How many times do I need to say this: VB.Net is *not* an upgrade. It is an
entirely *new* language based on VB. If you're gonna just upgrade
everything willy-nilly, then you are asking for trouble.

Re: They created J#, why couldn't they do VB#?

On Fri, 7 Dec 2001 09:41:19 -0600, Bob
<rainsleyno@bodyspamsolutions.com> wrote:
>I don't think that a language should shield us from the underlying
>technology. That's one of the biggest complaints of developers using
>previous versions of VB. It was either extremely difficult or impossible to
>do things in VB precisely because we couldn't get to the underlying
>technology.

What were you trying to get to? I have used all manner of API calls,
the vast majority of which were dead easy to comprehend and implement,
especially with Dan Appleman's books. Of course, VB was never intended
to write device drivers. Maybe you were trying to write device
drivers, or something equally low level. Maybe C/C++ would have been
more appropriate for the kinds of apps you were attempting. Horses for
courses.

Re: They created J#, why couldn't they do VB#?

On Fri, 7 Dec 2001 22:09:32 -0000, "Dave Lewis"
<spammenot@nospam.antispam> wrote:
>But the point of that part of my rant was simply that these "script kiddies"
>were hurting the reputation of those of us who do this for a living by
>writing very poor code. That was one of the major reasons that the so
>called "professionals" considered VB to be a toy language. I have no
>problem with people having fun with VB or any language, but when people
>start releasing horrible bits of crap which are not robust, then I do have
>a problem.
>(Ok, now I'm ranting....)

How do others hurt *your* reputation? Who is applying the hurt? Is it
the consumer, who employs you to fix the problem? Surely, you should
be able to explain the difference between a good coder and a bad one?
Like, if you had your lawn mown and it was done really badly. Would
you believe someone who then said, ah, well, all those who mow with a
Briggs & Stratton are just crap at mowing? What about a pilot who
lands the plane badly, with a real thump? You going to say, well, all
Air XYZ pilots are crap at landing anyway?

The thing is, many VB users are trying as best they might to do a good
job and, I would suggest, most of them achieve it, one way or another.
If they had not had VB to hand, then things might have looked a lot
different. For a start, Windows programming simply would not have
progressed anything like as much as it has. VB has been the making of
Windows, and the making of Microsoft. Without VB, I very much doubt if
Windows would have survived this long. By making Windows truly an easy
GUI to make programs for, many hundreds of thousands of businesses
implemented the platform as a matter of course. Sure, Office went a
long way towards Microsoft's success, too, but since Office and many
other products also have 99.9% VB compatibility, again it's plain why
VB was and is still of such paramount importance to Microsoft. It's
also extremely important to many thousands of large corporates, many
of those in the USA, where, as we know, recession looms. In a
recession, people want to batten down the hatches and ride out the
storm for a year or two. They don't want some clever **** coming along
and offering them a whole new ballgame. Which, nota bene, is going to
cost them money they can't afford to risk.
>> Any figures on how many VB users are useless hacks <g> and how many are
>> *professionals* (do it to make a living)? I guess 60/40.
>
>I really don't know, but I have worked with a lot of people who I would
>consider to be "hacks", useless or not. For instance, my girlfriend asked
>a little while ago about learning to write code. Which is fine with me,
>she is quite into computers, but if she wants to write code she's gonna
>have to learn a little first and not just jump right in.

Why not just let her jump right in? What about if you were the girl
and your boyfriend said, gee, I fancy writing some code, and you said,
"well, ya jes' better learn stuff first!" That's probably just how
your girlfriend feels about being treated like a script kiddie, even
before she's opened the box. Perhaps you're worried she might make a
better coder than you? Perhaps she might have that intuition we know
most women have which will turn her into a fabulous programmer, and
soon she'll be writing programs which you'll hate because they won't
be the way you would write them. And then she comes home and says how
she sold a couple of her apps today and you reckon, well, it just
ain't fair! She should have learned stuff first!

Shall I tell you what the best programming language of all would be?
It's where I tell "the computer" (which might just be a hole in the
wall, like an ATM) what I want and the computer delivers a "program"
to achieve it. Surely we should be thinking much more how we can get
the computer to do all the grunt work and share some of the thinking?
The vast majority of VB apps are database apps (and no, Zane, I don't
have a cite, okay -- call it a gut feeling because I have been
around for almost as long as you), so how many wheels should we
reinvent? VB was a start upon the road of automatic programming that
any user of average intelligence could employ. I am just amazed that
we buy these incredibly powerful machines, machines that could have
run the entire USA, IT-wise, fifty years ago, and they sit there
consuming power for eight hours a day and we actually make use of the
CPU for a few seconds in total -- okay, I'll be generous (I'm
English, after all said and done, so it's in my nature), let's say,
you max out the CPU for five minutes tops. The Delphi/Linux
compilers, for example, are so fast you're never sure whether you
actaually clicked the button. Instead of taking VB and improving upon
it, making it even more accessible to many more non-programmer users,
Microsoft has chosen the closed shop approach by excluding those it
previously would have welcomed, which, I'm sure, will go down well
with the Teamsters, but, as I've said before, programming, or rather,
the ease of programming, has been set back by five years at least by
the dumping of classic VB.

Until some other company has the nous to come up with a programming
model as good as classic VB, and then improve it, that is.

Re: They created J#, why couldn't they do VB#?

Mike,

Much as I hate to argue with a person who cannot or will not open their mind
enough to even realize that other people may have a valid point, I feel
compelled to defend my position.

<snip>
> Well, of course, I don't agree with you about classic VB one little
> bit. Sure, there may be some very poor VB programmers with big egos
> and little sense of responsibility. You will know that exactly the
> same could be said about C programmers, Java programmers -- you name
> it, any language will have a number of persistent, thoughtful,
> considerate and productive programmers; and a number in the opposite
> cubicle. This is the case in many other professions, too. Take
> medicine. Some surgeons are adept; others just kill people. It goes
> with the job.

Yes, every profession has people who don't care. My point, rather, was
that with VB there are a great many people who don't know any better. They
have never had any kind of training and what's more, they don't think that
they need it. Let me ask you something, would you drive a car without
being licenced??? Now I'm not going so far as to advocate licencing and all
that entails, but I am saying that programmers should know something about
what they're doing before they start.
> Now, because *you* have experienced a few (how many, exactly? A dozen,
> maybe, 20, tops?) badly written VB programs you want to chuck it out

Were you not listening when I said that I have been doing this for most of a
decade??? The former company that I refer to is in fact IBM and let me tell
you, they have very many apps written in VB, written by a great many
contractors who it seems are more interested in the money that they're
earning than in actually producing usefull/maintainable code.
> and deny all the other 2.99 million-odd VB users who are highly

You seem to persist in this notion that VB has "users". Not true, it has
developers. VB is a language and by it's very nature doesn't have users
(the IDE is a different matter) it has developers.
> appreciative of VB because it gets the job done for them. Instead of
> shouting your approval of Microsoft for delivering such a wonderful
> product that has a "very shallow learning curve" you want to replace
> it with a language that has anything but. And this is supposed to be
> the logical conclusion of all that thinking you did which led up to
> your post? The world is crying out for ease of use, simplicity,
> accessibility, but when a company such as Microsoft actually delivers
> a product which could be the very epitome of these criteria, you say
> "that's its weakness"? What a peculiar Alice In Wonderland world this
> is, where what the overwhelming majority would see as a good thing,
> you appear to denigrate it as a bad thing.

Again, you are paraphrasing my post. I said that it is it's strength and
it's weakness. But for those of us who actually know how to write reusable,
maintainable and productive code, the transition to .Net won't be that
hard. For those who write the "buggy crap" it will be very hard unless they
actually start to *learn* something!
Yes the world is crying out for simplicity and .Net helps toward that for
those of us who know what we're doing. As developers, it is our job to
carry that on and help make things simpler for our users.
At some distant point in the past, I was a carpenter.... (I can hear you
saying "Huh???", so bear with me a moment) This requires some degree of
skill and training on the part of the practitioner and rightly so. If
somebody tried to sell you a kitchen stool that was poorly made and badly
thought out, would you buy it??? No, of course not! You'd tell that guy
where to go. But you seem to advocate that with software development this
is fine. Having development tools that make it more difficult for "cowboy"
coders is a good thing and only those people should be worried about .Net
(do I detect a note of panic in your posts Mike??? <g>)
> Now, Windows the platform is, I assume, going to be around for a good
> many years yet, and classic VB programs will hopefully continue to
> function well into this decade. However, because Microsoft have
> declared that VB.NET is the next version of Visual Basic, no one is
> going to take classic VB seriously any longer. And it doesn't help
> when potential consumers or clients read that it's a "disaster leading
> to nightmare code-bases". You can say this with a straight face when
> you must surely be aware of all the myriad projects which have failed
> dismally without even a sniff of VB being anywhere near them.

Since I know personally of companies (both big and small) that still use
Windows 3.x and a large proportion of those with NT/9x are still at version
4 or 95/98, then I would have to agree that Windows as a platform will be
around for at least a few years yet. But business needs vary over time and
while VB 6 coders will be able to get along for a while tending to VB 6
apps, they will miss out on all the .net stuff that will be produced very
soon. VB 6 as a tool will cease to draw new development within a year to 18
months of the launch of .Net and after that point, any VB 6 fanatic will
also cease to draw new development work and will only be able to attract
work of the maintenance kind. Well fine, they can fix their own shoddy
code.
And again, you're paraphrasing me (you're not a journalist are you Mike???
You seem to be very keen to quote people out of context, anyway.). What I
actually said was that dodgy coders are "a disater leading to nightmare
code-bases". I am very aware of projects which have failed dismally,
whether in VB or not. But that has no bearing on the argument.... projects
fail for myriad reasons and rarely ever because of language issues. More
usually, it's because of timelines and changes in requirements.
> Fine, so classic VB has its problems. It also has very many strengths.
> Microsoft could have taken the problems and fixed them. Made the
> product more resilient to the fly-by-night coders which seem to
> inhabit your world, and generally enhanced the product as a genuine
> VB7, followed by, say, VB8 in around 2005. This way lies progress.

They did do all of that. It's called VB.Net....... <g>

And these cowboys inhabit everybodies world, not just mine. Take the test,
go to a shareware board and try to download something simple not crappily
implemented in VB....... I don't think it can be done.
> This way lies the continuity that Kathleen was banging on about in
> another thread. This would allow VB programmers users to transition
> entirely at their own pace to VB.NET, while still using an officially
> supported and maintained classic VB. It's not much to ask, is it?

Well, frankly yes it is. How would you feel if someone asked you to
maintain two version of one application???
> Surely about as much hassle to Microsoft as when Oliver Twist asked
> for another bowl of soup? I mean, they don't have to be such miserable
> old Scrooges, do they? Especially coming up to Christmas. All it needs
> is for His Billness to pass the word to the Bouncer, and bingo! A
> Christmas Present For The World.

If you'd care to repeat that joke(?) in English, the rest of the world
might get it.......
> "Keep classic VB running" (Hum it to the Coca Cola Christmas trailer.)

I'll say it again for those in the cheap seats....... VB is mortally
wounded. MS have finally woken up to this, and VB devs should also.

Finally, I have one question for you....... If you're so big on
Delphi/Kylix, then why the **** are you hanging around in a dotnet news
group???

Re: They created J#, why couldn't they do VB#?

Mike,
> How do others hurt *your* reputation? Who is applying the hurt? Is it
> the consumer, who employs you to fix the problem? Surely, you should
> be able to explain the difference between a good coder and a bad one?
> Like, if you had your lawn mown and it was done really badly. Would
> you believe someone who then said, ah, well, all those who mow with a
> Briggs & Stratton are just crap at mowing? What about a pilot who
> lands the plane badly, with a real thump? You going to say, well, all
> Air XYZ pilots are crap at landing anyway?

They hurt my reputation and the reputation of all VB coders. Sure I can
explain the difference between a good and bad coder, but that would imply
that companies and bosses are very rational (which in my experience they're
not!). And this is not about what I know or beleive, it's about what
bosses perceive to ve the case. They see poorly made, buggy apps coded by
a "cowboy" and in their eyes I am now worth less to them as a coder,
whether I can do the job or not because they beleive that all VB coders are
of the same ilk. If they get their fingers burnt then they are somewhat
more reticent about hiring someone else to do the same job.
> The thing is, many VB users are trying as best they might to do a good
> job and, I would suggest, most of them achieve it, one way or another.

But it's the "one way or another" that is the dangerous bit. There are many
right ways to do something and the script kiddie variety of coders seem to
consistently choose another way to implement things.
> If they had not had VB to hand, then things might have looked a lot
> different. For a start, Windows programming simply would not have
> progressed anything like as much as it has. VB has been the making of
> Windows, and the making of Microsoft. Without VB, I very much doubt if
> Windows would have survived this long. By making Windows truly an easy
> GUI to make programs for, many hundreds of thousands of businesses
> implemented the platform as a matter of course. Sure, Office went a
> long way towards Microsoft's success, too, but since Office and many
> other products also have 99.9% VB compatibility, again it's plain why
> VB was and is still of such paramount importance to Microsoft. It's

Well, that's not as tur as you'd like to beleive. Office is very important
to Windows survival in the work place (along with a ton of other back-office
type software) and is not *only* compatible with VB. MS have gone to great
lengths to make it compatible with a great many langauges including C++,
Delphi and almost anything else you could name. That is a major part of
MS's succes in the office.
> also extremely important to many thousands of large corporates, many
> of those in the USA, where, as we know, recession looms. In a
> recession, people want to batten down the hatches and ride out the
> storm for a year or two. They don't want some clever **** coming along
> and offering them a whole new ballgame. Which, nota bene, is going to
> cost them money they can't afford to risk.

This is the very reason behind .Net. To allow developers using their
exisiting knowledge to create and deploy the kind of applications that
businesses want and need. Would you prefer a version of VB that was locked
out of the future of Windows??? That'll bring you a lot of work, won't
it???
> Why not just let her jump right in? What about if you were the girl
> and your boyfriend said, gee, I fancy writing some code, and you said,
> "well, ya jes' better learn stuff first!" That's probably just how
> your girlfriend feels about being treated like a script kiddie, even
> before she's opened the box. Perhaps you're worried she might make a
> better coder than you? Perhaps she might have that intuition we know
> most women have which will turn her into a fabulous programmer, and
> soon she'll be writing programs which you'll hate because they won't
> be the way you would write them. And then she comes home and says how
> she sold a couple of her apps today and you reckon, well, it just
> ain't fair! She should have learned stuff first!

Actually, my girlfriend went out and bought some books to learn about OOP
and general development practices. She trusts me to guide her, since I've
been coding since the first day I had my old Amstrad writing CPM basic for
the Loco OS. Because she knows how long I've beend doing this (about 18
years in all), she realizes that I've got the experience to be able to say,
"I think that you need to understand a little of what you want to acheive
before you set out to acheive it."
Similarly, when my friends younger brother asked me about getting into the
business, I made sure that he understood what he wanted to do, then
recommended some books he could read. When he knew a little more I'd bea
able to guide him. Or my friend who wants to do hardware building. I told
him to study for A+ certification, even if he doesn't take the exam, the
study is worthwhile so he'll know something about what he's doing. Again,
he trusts me to help him since I know what I'm talking about. And when he
has some more idea of what he's doing, I'll be able to help him and learn
with him.
as for whether my girlfriend, or my friends brother for that matter, makes
a better coder than me...... well, I'm glad to say that my ego doesn't
bruise that easily. <g> In fact, I'd take it as a compliment if my
student became better than me. And if she goes out and sells some of her
work, then great!!! I'll buy her a bottle of champagne and we'll
celebrate. She also appreciates me treating her as an adult by saying,
"Yes you can do whatever your heart desires, but you should find out about
it first. And if you still want to do it then, then I'll help you however I
can." That's a long way from treating her like a script kiddie.
BTW the reason that I suggested books for her and didn't teach her these
tings from my own experience and knowledge is that she is in Wisconsin and
I'm in London and books are much easier to learn from than trans-atlantic
phone calls. but the point still stands..... you don't run until you can
walk. if you want to write code, learn something about what you're doing!
> Shall I tell you what the best programming language of all would be?
> It's where I tell "the computer" (which might just be a hole in the
> wall, like an ATM) what I want and the computer delivers a "program"
> to achieve it. Surely we should be thinking much more how we can get
> the computer to do all the grunt work and share some of the thinking?

I think you've been watching too much Star Trek.
> The vast majority of VB apps are database apps (and no, Zane, I don't
> have a cite, okay -- call it a gut feeling because I have been
> around for almost as long as you), so how many wheels should we
> reinvent? VB was a start upon the road of automatic programming that
> any user of average intelligence could employ. I am just amazed that
> we buy these incredibly powerful machines, machines that could have
> run the entire USA, IT-wise, fifty years ago, and they sit there
> consuming power for eight hours a day and we actually make use of the
> CPU for a few seconds in total -- okay, I'll be generous (I'm
> English, after all said and done, so it's in my nature), let's say,

Well, since I am a Londoner, I'm sorry to hear that you're English.
VB as an "automatic programming language"??? Do me a favour!!! If you
seriously think that that'll be acheived in your lifetime or mine, then you
really do need to get out of this line of work and take up something else.
> you max out the CPU for five minutes tops. The Delphi/Linux
> compilers, for example, are so fast you're never sure whether you
> actaually clicked the button. Instead of taking VB and improving upon
> it, making it even more accessible to many more non-programmer users,
> Microsoft has chosen the closed shop approach by excluding those it
> previously would have welcomed, which, I'm sure, will go down well
> with the Teamsters, but, as I've said before, programming, or rather,
> the ease of programming, has been set back by five years at least by
> the dumping of classic VB.

I don't think even MS haters could really have the balls to call .Net a
"closed shop" system. It's anything but closed. Large swathes of Windows
are finally (natively) open to VB coders along with all the stuff that is
also in .Net. This applies equally to any language that is written to use
the CLR, like (the rumoured) Delphi.Net. And as I've said before, the
ease of programming has not changed at all for those who care enough to know
a little about what they're doing.
> Until some other company has the nous to come up with a programming
> model as good as classic VB, and then improve it, that is.

Re: They created J#, why couldn't they do VB#?

[...]
> Yes, every profession has people who don't care. My point,
> rather, was that with VB there are a great many people who don't
> know any better. They have never had any kind of training and what's
> more, they don't think that they need it. Let me ask you something,
> would you drive a car without being licenced???

Many people have done so throughout the short history of the automobile.
In fact, such driver's licenses are a relatively recent development.
> Now I'm not going so far as to advocate licencing and all that entails,
> but I am saying that programmers should know something about what
> they're doing before they start.

But the issue that you keep trying to avoid is the fact that the
millions of VB users MM describes are not "programmers" any more than
a store clerk (who performs simple calculations) is a mathematician.
And it is those non-programmer "users" that Visual Beginners' All
Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code has served so well. And it is those
same people that VB.NET disempowers.

[...]
> Were you not listening when I said that I have been doing this for
> most of a decade???

Were you listening when various people here have said that we have
been doing this for 3 or 4 decades (or more)? You expect us to be
impressed with your single decade?

[...]
> You seem to persist in this notion that VB has "users". Not true,
> it has developers.

Wrong. Unlike the other parts of VS, VB quite definitely has "users"
who are not "developers" in any meaningful sense of the word. They are
computer users - managers/executives, salesmen, scientists, etc. - who
use VB for a lot of Q&D solutions and personal tools. By definition,
by its very name, VB is a tool for such "Beginners".

By some estimates (including those of Micro$oft itself) more than 70%
of those who use VB are "users" rather than "programmers/developers".
Those are the millions of people you continue to treat as though they
do not exist.
> VB is a language and by it's very nature doesn't have users (the IDE
> is a different matter) it has developers.

Wrong. By its very nature it (as opposed to the rest of VS) has both
users and developers. However, VB.NET will probably capture few (if
any) of those users due to its increased "learning curve" etc.

[...]
> But for those of us who actually know how to write reusable,
> maintainable and productive code, the transition to .Net won't be
> that hard. For those who write the "buggy crap" it will be very
> hard unless they actually start to *learn* something!

And for those who have other careers and concerns, that rather
arrogant demand that they devote time and energy to such specialized
and (to them) irrelevant studies is a significant disincentive to
the use of the tool. And some of these people are the same executives
who are making the buy/don't decisions on such development tools.

[...]
> How would you feel if someone asked you to maintain two version of
> one application???

Relieved, given the fact that I have been called on to maintain as many
as ten versions of one applications at various times in the past.

[...]
> I'll say it again for those in the cheap seats....... VB is
> mortally wounded. MS have finally woken up to this, and VB devs
> should also.

But the problem comes when the VB users find that their useful tool
is no longer available.

Re: They created J#, why couldn't they do VB#?

On Sat, 08 Dec 2001 02:46:10 -0700, "W.E. (Bill) Goodrich, PhD"
<bgoodric@earthlink.net> wrote:
>By some estimates (including those of Micro$oft itself) more than 70%
>of those who use VB are "users" rather than "programmers/developers".
>Those are the millions of people you continue to treat as though they
>do not exist.

Here's the core issue, in that regard, Bill: Why would MS ignore the fact
that VB contributed to the dominance of the windows os? I don't think
they would ignore that fact and so I _assume_ that they have research
which tells them that over the next couple of years existing VB/A
programmers can continue to use the tools they're using now, while those
of us who work in the leading edge can push ahead. Meanwhile, if there
really is a substantial market for VBA type programmers, then I'd be
willing to wager that MS will come out with a simplified programming
solution for them, which runs under .net.

I find it amazing that people like you seem to think that MS doesn't know
how to do market-research or work with what they learn from it.

Re: They created J#, why couldn't they do VB#?

I find it rather amazing that, while I am trying to present my arguments in
a rational and reasoned fashion, some of those who disagree with me can
find no better position for their arguments than to make personal attacks on
me and try to quote me out of context. Well, I don't take kindly to the
personal attacks and will *not* be drawn to that level myself and as for
non-contextual quoting..... well, my earlier posts are here for anyone who
wishes to take the time to read them, so why bother doing it?
> [...]
>
> > Yes, every profession has people who don't care. My point,
> > rather, was that with VB there are a great many people who don't
> > know any better. They have never had any kind of training and what's
> > more, they don't think that they need it. Let me ask you something,
> > would you drive a car without being licenced???
>
> Many people have done so throughout the short history of the automobile.
> In fact, such driver's licenses are a relatively recent development.

Well, I beg to differ. In the UK vehicle licencing has been mandatory for
new drivers since the late 1940's when itr became clear that automobiles
were becoming more numerous. But if you don't like that simile, lets try
some more.
Would you hire somebody who had no experience in, let's say sales, and had
worked for 20 years as an accountant, to be your sales manager?
> > Now I'm not going so far as to advocate licencing and all that entails,
> > but I am saying that programmers should know something about what
> > they're doing before they start.
>
> But the issue that you keep trying to avoid is the fact that the
> millions of VB users MM describes are not "programmers" any more than
> a store clerk (who performs simple calculations) is a mathematician.
> And it is those non-programmer "users" that Visual Beginners' All
> Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code has served so well. And it is those
> same people that VB.NET disempowers.
>
> [...]
>
> > Were you not listening when I said that I have been doing this for
> > most of a decade???
>
> Were you listening when various people here have said that we have
> been doing this for 3 or 4 decades (or more)? You expect us to be
> impressed with your single decade?

Again, you've missed the point. I have been doing VB for 8 years. I have
been writing BASIC code for various platforms for the better part of twenty.
I don't expect anyone to be impressed or not with how long I've been doing
this, since that wasn't the point. I was in fact defending myself against
a rather spurious personal attack regarding how many applications I have
written or maintained.
> [...]
>
> > You seem to persist in this notion that VB has "users". Not true,
> > it has developers.
>
> Wrong. Unlike the other parts of VS, VB quite definitely has "users"
> who are not "developers" in any meaningful sense of the word. They are
> computer users - managers/executives, salesmen, scientists, etc. - who
> use VB for a lot of Q&D solutions and personal tools. By definition,
> by its very name, VB is a tool for such "Beginners".
>
> By some estimates (including those of Micro$oft itself) more than 70%
> of those who use VB are "users" rather than "programmers/developers".
> Those are the millions of people you continue to treat as though they
> do not exist.

And again, I come to my argument about letting people who know nothing
about what they are doing get their hands on potentially very harmful
software. If you allow people who know nothing of what they are doing that
amount of power, you are very much asking for problems. But most of those
people you mention in those situations actually use VBA, which is not
affected by the .Net stuff.
> > VB is a language and by it's very nature doesn't have users (the IDE
> > is a different matter) it has developers.
>
> Wrong. By its very nature it (as opposed to the rest of VS) has both
> users and developers. However, VB.NET will probably capture few (if
> any) of those users due to its increased "learning curve" etc.

See the point above. VBA has users, VB has developers. Anyone who thinks
otherwise is either fooling themselves or are in the camp of "VB is just a
toy langauge".
> [...]
>
> > But for those of us who actually know how to write reusable,
> > maintainable and productive code, the transition to .Net won't be
> > that hard. For those who write the "buggy crap" it will be very
> > hard unless they actually start to *learn* something!
>
> And for those who have other careers and concerns, that rather
> arrogant demand that they devote time and energy to such specialized
> and (to them) irrelevant studies is a significant disincentive to
> the use of the tool. And some of these people are the same executives
> who are making the buy/don't decisions on such development tools.

Rubbish. Anyone considering whether to buy .Net or not will still be able
to use their VBA stuff unaffected. They will still be able to use VB 6 if
they have it. IMO, they will be more concerned about the extra power and
flexibility that their development staff will have.
> [...]
>
> > How would you feel if someone asked you to maintain two version of
> > one application???
>
> Relieved, given the fact that I have been called on to maintain as many
> as ten versions of one applications at various times in the past.

Well, I'd say that somebody was being taken for an idiot, then. <g> I
have actually had to support mutiple version of an application in the past
and forced the issue until we were back to a single code-base. Problem
solved. But while these were big apps from a business point of view,
compared to something as big as VB they were a fly to an elephant. The
point is, having parallel version of VB would be impossible to maintain.
> [...]
>
> > I'll say it again for those in the cheap seats....... VB is
> > mortally wounded. MS have finally woken up to this, and VB devs
> > should also.
>
> But the problem comes when the VB users find that their useful tool
> is no longer available.

Well, that won't be a problem for me and other like-minded individuals who
(as I might have mentioned before) actually know a thing or two about
programming and could switch to another language.
However, being that VB.Net is behind all the new compiled ASP stuff that
has started to pop up on MS's site and quite a few others I've seen
recently, I don't think that MS will be making such a radical move for a
while yet.

..Net is development in evolution, learn to cope or line up with the Dodo's.

Re: They created J#, why couldn't they do VB#?

Dave,
> I find it rather amazing that, while I am trying to present my arguments
in
> a rational and reasoned fashion, some of those who disagree with me can
> find no better position for their arguments than to make personal attacks
on
> me and try to quote me out of context. Well, I don't take kindly to the
> personal attacks and will *not* be drawn to that level myself and as for
> non-contextual quoting..... well, my earlier posts are here for anyone
who
> wishes to take the time to read them, so why bother doing it?

This is Dr Bills modus operandi. When he senses that he is standing on shaky
ground technically, he starts to toss physco-babble on you, questioning your
motives for existence and stuff like that. It actually becomes quite amusing
after a while.